New op­por­tu­ni­ties for ru­ral fire­fight­ers

Res­cue ser­vice will ap­point two posts in theTrossachs

One of Scot­land’s first full time ru­ral fire­fight­ers will take up post in the Trossachs early in the new year - and could spark the reestab­lish­ment of lo­cal fire cadet units.

The Scot­tish Fire and Res­cue Ser­vice is ap­point­ing 50-60 ru­ral full-time posts over the near three years.

New staff will work along­side re­tained and vol­un­teer fire­fight­ers in ru­ral com­mu­ni­ties.

Their re­spon­si­bil­i­ties will in­clude train­ing and sup­port for col­leagues, pre­ven­tion and pro­tec­tion work in com­mu­ni­ties, and the cre­ation and de­liv­ery of cadet schemes.

Two of the po­si­tions - de­scribed as “high value, well paid and skilled” will be in­tro­duced in Stir­ling to cover the Trossachs area and the first has al­ready been al­lo­cated, with the sec­ond ex­pected to be in­tro­duced next year.

At a meet­ing of Stir­ling Coun­cil’s pub­lic safety com­mit­tee re­cently, Scot­tish Fire and Res­cue’s se­nior of­fi­cer for Stir­ling and Clack­man­nan­shire Rod­die Keith said: “In the first wave we have suc­cess­fully re­cruited one for north of the Trossachs in­clud­ing Killin, Tyn­drum, Cri­an­larich and Callander.

“The suc­cess­ful can­di­date will be se­lected, trained and in po­si­tion by Jan­uary/Fe­bru­ary and will be a fan­tas­tic ad­di­tion to our struc­ture and the way we work and pro­vide a sin­gle point of con­tact for sev­eral re­tained fire sta­tions.

“We are re­ally look­ing for­ward to that pro­vi­sion be­ing in place.

“This new post will pro­vide re­silience for our op­er­a­tional re­sponse and sup­port for ex­ist­ing crews. It will also be a first point of con­tact for part­ner­ship work­ing in the area cov­ered.”

Mr Rod­die said there was also ex­cite­ment about the rein­tro­duc­tion of cadet schemes to the SFRS.

“The cadets were a great as­set for so many rea­sons, pro­vid­ing ac­tiv­i­ties and ben­e­fits for chil­dren and young peo­ple, and help­ing with re­cruit­ment and ed­u­ca­tion. This gives us the po­ten­tial for great op­por­tu­ni­ties.

“Part of the re­mit of the RFTP post is set­ting up cadet units. The SFRS is still work­ing on how cadet units will work.”

The com­mit­tee heard that the SFRS board would be look­ing at a num­ber of op­tions re­gard­ing cadets in­clud­ing age range, how they would be de­liv­ered and where in Scot­land the units might be es­tab­lished.

Asked by Coun­cil­lor Gra­ham Lam­bie if there was hope that the for­mer Bal­fron Fire Cadets unit could be reestab­lished, Mr Keith said: “I am very aware there was a cadet scheme in Bal­fron and also that Bal­fron has one of the area’s ma­jor high schools.

“This would make them a strong can­di­date for a cadet unit but we will have to wait for fur­ther de­tails.”

More than 60 young­sters, in­clud­ing in Bal­fron and Til­li­coul­try, were af­fected when the then area fire board ef­fec­tively closed the cadet scheme in 2009.

In its place, fire ser­vice chiefs in­tro­duced a dif­fer­ent type of project, based in Falkirk and aligned with the Na­tional Young Fire­fight­ers scheme.

The move caused a po­lit­i­cal row and a last ditch at­tempt to save the set up from be­ing scrapped failed.